Saturday Reflections

It takes over a billion naira to maintain one senator in Nigeria in office for one year. There are about 109 senators in Nigeria. That amounts to over a hundred billion for salaries, allowances and constituency projects. These humongous sums which our political office holders have sworn that we can't afford because the nation is broke are being drained from our national coffers to maintain just about a hundred of freeloaders in office.

Now, given the huge cost of maintaining just 109 senators, can anyone recall one single law that is beneficial to the Nigerian people which this particular senate has passed? Can anyone from any part of the country aside, perhaps, Natasha Akpoti say that the senator representing his or her senatorial district has sponsored any bill capturing the needs of that zone which has been successfully passed into law to benefit that zone? Can anybody really remember the campaign promises made by any senator representing his or her senatorial zone that the senator successfully sponsored and was passed into law on that particular senator's behest? 

The fact is that the upper legislative chamber has become an attractive retirement and vacation resort where politically spent forces now go to rest after playing different, previously ruinous, destiny-killing roles at both their states and federal levels. They are a talking shop of petty contractors with a leader wielding a gavel to vote out large sums after consensus agreements of all stakeholders.

The fact that our official institutions and our criminal justice system are all desirous of amendment laws which the lawmakers, especially the upper legislative chamber needs to take as their priority is not a primary concern to them. They are not there to make the lives of Nigerians more comfortable but more miserable because the more pauperised the people of their senatorial zones become, the more powerful and unchallenged they remain. If not, can anyone tell me there are no senators representing the hapless victims of murder by terrorists and bandits in the North?

When I muted the idea of scrapping the senate in a nugget post, many wanted to know who was going to do the scrapping. I am very much aware that those who are beneficiaries of the present parasitic system that the legislature has become will never entertain such a proposition but the onus lies on Nigerians to begin to demand a change to a system that has become largely a drain on the nation's resources. Nigerians must begin to clamor for a referendum to determine whether they want to continue to operate a democracy that sees almost 70% of its resources spent on keeping less than a thousand of its population comfortable at the detriment of over 200 million citizens. Our executive and legislature made up of less than 600 people cannot continue to allocate over 60% of the nation's resources to themselves while telling over 200 million of us to continue to be patient and sacrifice in the hopes of a better day in the future that will never come. We must aggregate all our present predicaments into a holistic document that will serve as a basis for a referendum if we must have a working country, including this democracy as presently run in 2027. 

We must go back to the drawing board and start afresh as if we are getting a new independence from colonial masters which, in this case, is our own black brothers who took over from the British. 

We cannot just continue to clamor for new office seekers after every four years without clearing out the Aegean stable that is making the country not to work, otherwise, we will only be wasting our time. In this digital age, we do not need to reinvent the wheel because there are many examples of developed and rapidly developing countries we can copy their models honestly and with all sense of purpose. All we need is a population ready to make their country work, making everybody subservient to the law no matter how highly placed, making their institutions strong enough to punish law breakers. If we do not put these safeguards in place as we go into another round of elections in 2027.

Credits @ Author